


Where the Heart Is –or- Five Times Donald Wanted to Go Home to Timmy and One Time He Really, Really Needed Timmy to Come Home to Him

by NyteFlyer



Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Gay Relationship, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like….</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Heart Is –or- Five Times Donald Wanted to Go Home to Timmy and One Time He Really, Really Needed Timmy to Come Home to Him

_And every stranger’s face I see_

_reminds me that I long to be_

_homeward bound._

_~~ Simon and Garfunkel_

  
  
Late for dinner again.  After all these years, I guess you’ve pretty much gotten used to it, but it still makes me feel bad sometimes when I think of all the times I’ve kept you waiting.  Blame it on my little pissant of a client, Mike McCullough.  I’d finally gotten the dirt on his future former boyfriend the night before, so I’d asked him to stop by my office around 5:00 to go over the report and settle up.  He wasn’t exactly happy to hear what I’d found out, but he seemed pleased enough with the way I’d handled the case.  A little too pleased, maybe.

Just as I was walking him out, he dropped to his knees and reached for my fly.  I can’t say I was surprised – hazards of the trade and all that – but _he_ sure as hell was when my left knee caught him square in the chest, knocking the air out of his lungs and the wind out of his sails.  He landed on his back, cracking his head against the corner of my desk hard enough to make me wonder if that bargain basement piece of shit could withstand contact with his thick skull.  Sure enough, as he lay there blinking up at the ceiling like a baby bird who can’t figure out why he missed out on his morning worm, the desk wobbled and tilted.  I heard a weird creaking noise, but I wasn’t sure whether it came from the desk or good ol’ Mike.  Then the leg nearest his head gave out.  Ledgers, reports, files, a couple of half-empty coffee mugs – it all rained down on him, followed by the new monitor I’d just shelled out two hundred bucks for last week when the dinosaur I’d been using finally went belly-up.  It bounced off his forehead, leaving a pretty impressive dent there, before hitting the floor.

“Shit,” I said.

“I’ll sue!”  The words were muffled by the pile of coffee-soaked papers plastered to the bottom half of his face, but the expression in his bulging gray eyes got the message across loud and clear.   He didn’t look like a baby bird anymore, I can tell you that much.

“Try it,” I told him.  “You attempted to sexually assault me and trashed my office.  I was forced to defend myself.  You’ll be lucky if I don’t decide to press charges.  As it is, you can expect to receive a revised bill sometime in the next day or two.  It’ll include an itemized list of damages.”

“Bastard.”

“My parents were married, actually.  Now get out of here so I can clean up this mess.  My partner’s waiting dinner on me, and if those stuffed pork chops he’s making dry out, there’ll be hell to pay.”

I watched Mike haul himself to his feet and mop at the coffee stains on his shirt with a few of the semi-dry papers that were still floating around, then gather his report and turn to go.  “What a prick,” he mumbled as he limped toward the door. 

“Funny, that’s exactly what my partner says every time he goes down on it.”

Yeah, I know.  This is the point where you usually tell me you’ve heard enough.  That’s your prerogative, of course.  But after what happened with Andrew McWhirter, I promised I’d never keep a secret from you again.  So even if hearing this gets your feathers in a ruff, I’m gonna keep on telling you this stuff just like I promised.  It’s a small price to pay for knowing you can trust me. 

Even before you and I met, I wouldn’t have accepted the kind of bonus McCullough offered me.  I may have been a whore during a certain period of my life, but I was a whore with scruples, even if they were the self-serving kind.  I made up my mind early on that a man who mixes business with pleasure generally ends up getting the shaft on both accounts.  Of course, the one time I broke my number-one rule, it was with you.  My heart doesn’t override my head very often, but when it does, I’ve learned to listen to it.  You taught me that.

It’s not like I’ve never been tempted.  I’ve locked the door behind better-looking clients than Mike McCullough and treated myself to a fast and furious J/O session before they cleared the building – or at least that’s the way I used to handle it before I found you.  In my line of work, temptation’s always just around the corner, but it’s not like I’ve ever seriously considered giving in to it.  I’m weak and I’m human, but I’m not stupid, and I know a good thing when I’ve got it.  So these days, whenever I brush up against a nicely toned bicep or a well-muscled thigh, I still throw the lock on my office door, but not until I’m on the other side of it.  Then I haul my weak, human and perpetually horny ass back to where it belongs – home to you. 

* * * *

I’m good.  God knows, I’m good.  But I gotta say, that was the easiest money I ever made.

I followed my subject, a retired history professor and grandfather of eight, into The Rage at 11:00 on the dot, and by 11:08 I was discreetly snapping shots of him and a local sleazeball named Mel McGuire as they not-so-discreetly felt each other up on the dance floor.  By 11:16, he’d popped Mel’s trademark crystal-butt-plug-on-a-chain into his mouth and was sucking on it like a pacifier.  And by 11:39, Mel had the professor choking out a series of whines, whimpers and assorted muffled curses in a bathroom cubicle more or less designed for that purpose as I recorded the audio portion of their program from an adjoining stall.  Case closed, and that’ll be $500, please.

I’d be refunding a pretty good chunk of my retainer, of course.  The professor’s wife seemed like a nice lady, and it wouldn’t be right to gouge her for less than half a night’s work on top of bringing her 47-year marriage to a screeching halt.  Still, my work/profit ratio was looking pretty sweet, and if I hurried home, I might even catch you awake and willing to celebrate my job-well-done in any number of creative and enthusiastic ways. 

Smiling at the thought,  I tucked the camera inside my jacket and started working my way toward the exit, passing a couple of the infamous Rage Cages, where leather-clad bad boys doled out discipline to willing clientele. More oiled and shaved gym bodies did the ol’ bump and grind on top of a horseshoe-shaped bar in the center of the room, giving an extra bump here or grind there when they noticed a five-spot ready to be slipped inside their well-padded G-strings.  I spotted our neighbor, Jay Tomlinson, waving what looked like a twenty at one suicide-blond dancer, and was about to wander over and give him hell until I noticed that the guy he was with – the bleached and permed bimboy who was wrist-deep inside Jay’s designer jeans, giving his ass a pretty good grope – was not his “bald but beautiful” husband, Randall. 

Shit.  Randall was a good neighbor and a good guy.  But then again, I always thought Jay was, too.  They were always ready to pitch in when the gutters needed cleaning or broken tree limbs needed trimming after a bad storm, or to call us over after dinner for a couple of beers on the back porch.   And we both know that Randall kept me out of the doghouse more than once by pinch-hitting for me at art shows and world music festivals, or by just waiting up with you over a chess board and a bottle of brandy on nights when Jay and I both had to work late.

Jay was working _something_ , all right, but as far as I could tell, it didn’t have a helluva lot to do with his graphic design business.   And as used to this crap as I was by then and as desensitized to it all, the thought made me just a little bit sick. 

I jostled my way past frantic bodies moving to an even more frantic-sounding techno mix, trying not to meet any of the dancers’ eyes because what I saw there could only depress me.  Hook-ups, nothing there but hook-ups, and it hadn’t been so long since I’d been one of the predatory masses.  What if I’d never met you, never broken the cycle of self-indulgence that was really just an insidious form of self-abuse, never gotten it though my thick skull that I was worth having somebody like you to come home to?

I called you as soon as I was outside and told you I’d be home in ten, though thirty was more like it by the time I made it through our front door.  I could tell you really didn’t mind the wait so much, though.  Not after you saw the bottle of your favorite pinot and the bouquet of red roses I held in my hands.

* * * *

Stuck in an endless stream of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the thruway, I reached for the cracked knob on the radio, hoping the Bob and Tom wannabes on WFML would help me pass the time with their boob jokes and dirty jingles. 

Static.  Nothing but static.

Wonderful.

Beads of sweat dripped off the end of my nose, pooling inside a crease in the frayed length of seat belt stretched across my lap.  No radio, no AC, and nowhere to go but right here, breathing in diesel fumes from the dump truck in front of me as we inched our way along.

It would have been as good a time as any to break into an uncontrollable fit of road rage and start shooting people, I guess.  Don’t think I didn’t consider it.  Instead, I  speed-dialed your cell.

“Ever wonder why in the hell they call it rush hour?” I asked when you picked up.  “Come To a Dead Stop and Slowly Drown In Your Own Sweat Hour is more like it.  Or Cross Your Legs and Pray You Don’t Piss Your Pants Hour, maybe.  Either way, rushing has nothing to do with it, and oozing bodily fluids is generally involved.”

You laughed then, and suddenly everything was okay.  Sure, I was still stalled out and sweating, sucking up enough exhaust to give me black lung disease as I clung to the feeble hope that I still might make it to the bathroom in time to save my shorts.  But none of that mattered, not really, because you were with me in spirit if not in flesh, laughing at my non-stop whining and whispering promises for later that were at once so prim and so filthy that my dick almost – _almost_ – forgot it was in dangerously close proximity to a throbbing, overfilled, buzz-kill of a bladder.

I shifted in my seat, settling into a more comfortable position as you treated me to the blow-by-blows of your harrowing day of phone calls and speech writing, and felt myself start to relax.  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t going anywhere fast, but I was still going, and you’d be along for the ride every inch of the way.  I might’ve still been miles from our house, but the second I heard your voice, I knew I’d made it home.

* * * *

I’d been in similar situations more than once, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

The knife blade pressed harder against the side of my neck, and I felt a sharp sting followed by a warm, wet trickle.  Blood – that fucking bastard had actually drawn blood.  Now, that _really_ pissed me off. 

I was late heading home as it was, and now I’d have to change shirts before we left for the theater.  Not that I gave a hairy rat’s ass if we didn’t find our seats before the house lights dimmed – or if we made it to the play at all, for that matter.  But I knew you did.  These tickets were a birthday gift from your mom, and I wanted you to get her money’s worth. 

The guy was bigger than me.  Let’s face it, most guys are, but that never slowed me down before.  With a slight shift in position and the right amount of leverage applied at the right moment, I could take him down, maybe kick his ass across the alley a time or two, and still get you to the theater on time.

“Think hard, faggot.  Is hanging onto the shit in that file really worth making your  pretty little boyfriend a widow?”

It’d taken me over a month to put together the contents of that file.   In the old days, I wouldn’t have hesitated.  I would’ve made a fight of it and either come out on top or not at all.  But in the old days, all I had to come home to was an empty apartment and a bottle of Maker’s Mark.  Now I had you. 

If I didn’t get home in time for us to catch every second of the first act, you’d be disappointed and maybe a little pissed, but I’d figure out a way to make it up to you.  If I didn’t make it home at all….

I handed him the file.

* * * *

The day “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was finally toast, you asked if I’d consider re-enlisting.  I told you no, and I meant it.  Why throw away the life we’ve built together just so I could return to the scene of my so-called crime and rub it in the brass’s face that they couldn’t hurt me anymore?  I’d be hurting myself, reopening an old wound it took years of TLC from you to heal.  Worse, I’d be hurting you, and we both know I wouldn’t do that for anything in the world.

Never, ever think for one minute that I don’t love my life here in Albany with you.  Yeah, sometimes I get frustrated with being pigeonholed as Sparky, the Gay Detective.  And yeah, sometimes the walls close in and I feel a little trapped.  But like you tried to tell me years ago, the problem is with society’s attitude toward gay men, not with who I am or who I’m with.  Yeah, I’d loved the army, and until I got caught – literally – with my pants down, the army loved me.  But that particular love affair ended on a sour note, and like most jilted lovers, I was bitter.

Over time, the bitterness faded.  Or to be more precise, you wore it away, smoothing off layer after layer of anger and guilt with a love so steady and sure it took my breathe away. 

I know you’ll always be there to support me, no matter what.  If I did decide to give the military another shot, you’d go with the flow, relocate at the expense of your own career and your own happiness, endure the endless months of loneliness and worry while I was deployed.  And you’d never complain, not even once, because you’d think I finally had what I really wanted.

I’ve had that all along.

You’ve always been so much tougher than me.  You’d hate the long separations, the dinners consisting of a sandwich gobbled over the kitchen sink or skipped altogether because eating alone depresses you,  the nights of tossing and turning in an empty bed.  You’d hate it, but you’d deal with it.

I couldn’t. 

Like Danny Glover says in the _Lethal Weapon_ flicks, I’m too old for this shit.  I need the stability and consistency you’ve brought to my life, the comfort and companionship and love. I don’t want to roll over in the night and not smell you on my pillow, to not feel your body heat or listen to your snores, to not see your face first thing every morning and last thing every night.  If you wanna know the truth, I’d be lost without it.

I once thought the army was my home.  I was wrong.  Home, as they say, is where the heart is.  And my heart found its home the day I found you.

* * * *

Tonight, I sit by your bedside, remembering all the times and all the ways you’ve defined _home_ to me.  I don’t guess I’ve ever told you that, not in so many words.   I leave too much of this stuff up to you, trusting you to read my mind and understand so many things I can’t seem to articulate.  Or maybe I can, but I’ve just never taken the time to try.  When this is over, we’re gonna curl up by the fire one evening with a pitcher of martinis, and I’m gonna find the words to spell it out to you in plain English.   

 _When this is over._ Panic, hot and sour, surges into my throat.  I swallow it back, take your hand. 

“Okay, Bruiser, I know playing the hero took a lot out of you.”  My voice sounds steadier than I feel.  I raise your hand to my lips, kiss your fingertips, your knuckles, the back of your wrist.  For good measure, I turn it over and kiss your palm, too, then press it to my cheek.  “You’re an evil, manipulative man, getting yourself shot just so you’d be the center of attention.  Enough, already.  Your mom’s got charities to run, and your dad’s got democrats to terrorize.  If I don’t start pulling my share of the caseload, Kenny’s gonna walk out on me.”  I hear my voice waver and take several slow, even breaths to steady it.  “It’s time to come back from wherever you’ve gone, sweetheart.  It’s time for you to come back home to me.”

Your father shoves his hands into his pockets, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, clears his throat.  Your mother pats my shoulder and then squeezes it, softly murmurs words of comfort.

You don’t make a sound.

It’s been eleven days since the shy, skinny political science major from SUNY pulled a gun on Senator Platt, eleven long days since you proved once and for all that while you might not be able to point a gun at anybody and pull the trigger, you have no qualms about placing yourself in the line of fire when someone else does.  You weren’t the only person to react or even the first, but you were the one closest to Platt when the gun went off.  Security did its job, the kid everyone described as “smart, but socially awkward” was hauled off in cuffs, and the senator was whisked away to be treated for what the media would refer to as “a minor flesh wound.”  But not before two out of the three bullets meant for Platt hit you instead.

You bled so much, Timmy.  Even the EMT who treated you at the scene told me she’d never seen so much blood.  Your heart stopped twice, once during transport and again in the ER.  The second time, they had a hard time getting it started again.  They got the bleeding stopped and repaired the damage those bullets left behind, and they say your body’s healing just fine.  But your mind?  After going without oxygen for so long, the possibility of brain-damage is still an open-ended question, one nobody will be able to answer until you open your eyes and say something.

“These things can be tricky,” the doctor said when I cornered him a few days ago and demanded to know what’s what.  Tricky, as if it was a medical term that explained everything.  I clenched my fists when he said it, barely controlling the urge to deck him.  Tricky, as if he was talking about putting together a model airplane or debating how to answer his wife when she asked if her new dress made her look fat.  “I know this is difficult for you, but at this point, all we can do is wait and see how he responds to stimuli when he comes to.”

Responds to stimuli?  _Jesus_.  “When’s that gonna happen?”  I asked.

“That’s difficult to predict.  Your partner’s been through a painful and terrifying ordeal.  He’s been traumatized physiologically, we know that for certain.  Perhaps psychologically as well.  It’s possible that his mind’s been using the past few days as a time out, an opportunity to retreat from reality and allow itself to process what’s happened on its own terms.”

“Sooner or later, he _will_ wake up, though?”

“Again, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Kelly and your parents sit with me in shifts, nagging me to walk down to the cafeteria for something besides vending machine coffee and the occasional Snickers bar, trying to convince me to go home for a while and rest.  Rest?  What a fucking joke.   How can I rest without knowing when you’ll be coming back to me, whether you’ll be coming back to me at all?  Kenny comes and goes, stopping by the house to feed the cat and bring in the mail.  He brings me fresh clothes, smuggles in Thai takeout and conspires with your mother to get me to eat.  Randall and Jay stopped by with flowers and that potted plant – the neighbors took up a collection, I think.  Bub checks in sometimes and so do your secretary and a few of your other co-workers, all asking if there’s anything they can do.  There isn’t and they know it, but I guess it makes them feel better to make the offer.  I always thank them, tell them you’d appreciate knowing how much they care.  I know you _do_ appreciate it. 

The senator and her husband stop by every day.  Her arm’s in a sling but it’s not bothering her much.  Just a little sore at night when she’s trying to settle in, she says.  She and your dad field the press – saving a senator’s life is front page stuff, you know – issuing statements about your progress and talking about what a fighter you are.  Some guy who writes for the _Times_ called you Albany’s own Superman, so now everybody’s climbed onto that bandwagon.  I guess it’s because you stopped a couple of bullets and you're a dead ringer for Clark Kent, even without your glasses.  At least Platt doesn’t seem to mind that you’re getting your 15 minutes because of her.  She wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you, and she’s pretty damned vocal about letting everybody know it.

I try to be grateful for all that, glad for the sake of the husband who loves her, happy for you, since I know you’d worry yourself sick if she’d come through this any worse than she did.  You care about her, I know that, and for your sake, I’m trying as hard as I can to care about her, too.

Your night nurse swings through to switch out your IV bag and check your catheter.  When I offer to move out of her way, she tells me not to be silly, that she’s worked around bigger obstacles than me during her 35 years in “The White Hat Brigade”.  I’ve barely eaten or slept in the eleven days, and I guess I’m getting punchy, because it makes me wonder why in the hell nurses don’t wear white hats anymore.  Or if they ever did, outside of the movies. 

Sherrill, she told us the night they moved you in here.  Her name’s Sherrill. This one’s a keeper, according to your mom, because she always treats you like a human being instead of poking you like a roast to see if you’re done.  The two of them hit it off from the start, and when it’s time for her break, your mom sometimes joins her for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of quiet conversation.

Sherrill’s a product of the deep south, and when I’m feeling up to it, I tease her about her accent.  Paula Deen, Catheter Queen, I call her, and that always gets a laugh.  I’m not up to much of anything tonight, but she doesn’t seem to hold that against me.  When she’s finished changing your catheter and checking your vital signs, she tosses her disposable gloves into the biohazards receptacle and gives my hand a motherly pat.

“His color’s looking better tonight, I think,” she tells me in that Paula Deen voice, and I can’t help falling just a little bit in love with her for saying that.  Then she picks up the latest in a series of glitter-embellished, get-well greetings and smiles.  “I’ll be back later to see if you all need anything,” she says.  “I’ll try to find tape so you can hang it on the wall with the others.”

If Cadie Bug makes you one more get-well card, she’s gonna put Hallmark out of business.  She keeps asking to see you, but there’s an age restriction on visitors in ICU, and even now that you’re in intermediate care,  your folks aren’t so sure bringing her here is the best idea, at least not yet.  I guess they think she’ll freak out if you don’t sit up and give her a hug.  Maybe they think _I’ll_ freak out.  Kelly hangs out most of the time she’s at school, though.  She paces the hall a lot, fidgets with your blanket and runs errands, pins your dad with that laser glare of hers whenever she thinks he’s about to say something clueless. 

You know how it is with Kelly and me.  She never says much, but yesterday she put her arms around me and cried.

I appreciate the support, I really do, but all these awkward stabs at reassurance make it even harder for me to stand your silence.  While people are milling around and trying to be useful, you seem even more lifeless and lost.  The body on the bed stops being you, turning into a pale and empty shell taking up the space in the universe that’s reserved for you.  You’re still in there.  I know you’re still in there.  But when this place turns into a crowd scene, it feels like you retreat so far inside yourself  I can’t reach you at all. 

At night, once everybody’s gone home and we’re alone, you seem closer to the surface, somehow.  I massage your feet and wrists, rub lotion on your skin and moisturizer on your chapped lips, flex your limbs to keep your muscles in tone the way the physical therapist showed me.  A time or two, I laid my head on the edge of the mattress and bawled like a baby.  Mostly, I just sit here holding your hand, begging you to come home.

When the doctor came through this afternoon, he got straight to the point.  You haven’t lost any ground, he said, but you haven’t gained much, either.   Your wounds are healing nicely, but you’ve shown no sign of coming out of the coma – a word he’s avoided using before now.  Or maybe he _has_ used it, but I’ve avoided hearing it.  He recommended replacing your nasal feeding tube with a semi-permanent one surgically inserted through your belly, suggested it might be time to consider our options for long-term care. 

 _Long-term care_.  The words echo inside my head, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna accept their meaning. 

“The decision is yours,” your mother told me as she gently squeezed my fingers.  “We’ll stand behind you, no matter what you decide to do.” 

“Don’t worry about the cost,” your father said.  “Whatever you think he needs, we’ll cover the expense.”

Kenny and Bub made themselves scarce.  Kelly couldn’t look me in the eye.

I can’t deal with this, Timmy.  Not with all these people here.  So I’m sending everyone home tonight.  Don’t worry, I’m being nice about it, but I’m firm, too, telling them I’m tired and need to think, that I want some quiet time alone with you. 

“Are you sure you’re all right?” your mother asks as she gathers her sweater and purse.

I’ve never been less all right in my life.

Under the merciless glare of those hospital lights, I go through the same motions I’ve gone through every night since this nightmare began.  I sponge you off and shave you, apply lotion and lip balm, go through your bend and flex exercises as carefully and thoroughly as I did all those other nights.  And the whole time, I keep saying to you – sometimes out loud but mostly inside my own head – “Come home to me, Timmy.  You’ve been MIA too long.  Please, honey, I can’t make it here without you.  If you love me, why won’t you come home?”

Once the nightly routine is done, I pull up a chair and prop my elbows on the bed, holding my head in my hands.  A pissed-off midget with a sledgehammer’s pounding the inside of my skull in fits and starts, and I’ve swilled enough bad coffee to have the caffeine jitters and a perpetually sour stomach, too.  I pretty much assume I’ll never fall sleep again.  But I guess I either doze off or pass out, because after a while I feel something warm brush against my ear, and I hear what I _know_ is your voice whispering over and over again, “Where am I?” 

I startle awake and lean over you, half-expecting to see those cornflower blue eyes of yours wide open and watching me.  But they’re still closed, your skin’s still pale and too cool to the touch, your hand’s still motionless in mine.  I look around the room, taking in the details I’ve been trying to block out for days – the harsh lighting, the antiseptic smells, the sound of the equipment and the noises from the hallway, the course texture of the sheets on your narrow, railed bed.  Something beyond words or even conscious thought passes between us.

I push the call button, and when Sherrill appears, I tell her what I want to do.  Then I call Kenny.

A little over an hour later, he’s standing in the doorway, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.  I probably have.   But without questioning me even once, he’s ransacked our house, bringing a blanket and sheets stripped straight off our bed, your silk pajamas, scented candles from our bathroom, both of our pillows.   He tucks the cooler I asked him to bring in a corner, then goes to work setting up your MP3 player and speakers without saying a word.  Any other time, I’d have to rag him, telling him how grateful I was for the silence.  Tonight I’m just grateful.

When an orderly comes through, wheeling the biggest hospital bed I’ve ever seen, Kenny gets out of the way, tucking himself into the corner with the cooler.  The bed was Sherrill’s idea.  Plus-sized, she called it, and usually reserved for plus-sized patients.  One he lines it up with the bed you’re in, he steps out and Sherrill steps in, followed by two other nurses I don’t think I’ve seen before.  She introduces them as Kathleen and Jeffrey, her favorite partners in crime.

They go to work on the new bed, replacing standard-issue sandpaper sheets with the Egyptian cotton ones from home.  Ours are too big, of course, but Kathleen tucks the extra fabric under the mattress, pulling here and smoothing there, until they look like a perfect fit.  While she finishes making the bed, Jeffrey takes charge of all your tubes and bags and miscellaneous hardware, keeping it safely out of the way while Sherrill and I ease you out of the hospital gown and into your pajamas. 

“You’re got good hands for this,” she tells me.  “You’re gentle and quick.  Maybe you’ve missed your calling.”

I tell her no, the only guy I wanna strip is you.

“Lucky man,” Jeffrey says, and they all laugh.  

When it’s time to make the transfer, I scoot out of the way to let them work.  They’re fast and efficient, settling you on your side with your back against the side rail for support, one of our own pillows slipped between those cold metal bars and you for cushioning.  Sherrill lifts your head as I adjust the other pillow beneath it, then turns to me, smiling her motherly smile as the other two reset your IV and make sure all those plastic tubes are out of the way and not in a tangle. 

“Remember, I’m just down the hall if you need anything,” she says.

Suddenly, my emotions are way too close to the surface. 

“You don’t know how much—”  I can’t hold it together if I say anymore, so I stop right there and trust her to understand the rest.  She does – I can see it in her eyes.  She’s like you that way.

Once they’ve gathered their supplies and rolled your old bed out, closing the door behind them, Kenny comes out of hiding long enough to start a soft jazz mix playing and to light the candles.  Then he pulls a martini shaker out of the cooler  and pours us each a drink.  He polishes his off fast because he’s nervous, I guess, then starts edging his way toward the door. 

“Anything else you need?” he asks.

On impulse, I set my drink aside and hug him long and hard.  Kenny and I don’t exactly have a hugging type of relationship, and I don’t know which of us is more surprised, him or me.  But he returns the hug, awkwardly stroking the back of my head and my shoulders as I lose it a little bit and thank him for all he’s done.  When I break the hold, we both laugh a little, sort of uncomfortably and sort of not.

Once he’s gone, I kick off my shoes and strip down to my boxers before turning off the light.  I take a final sip of martini and hold it in my mouth, swishing it around in there as I crawl into the bed beside you, tangling my legs with yours, placing your arm around my waist and tucking the comforter – the thick, hand-quilted one your parents gave us years ago as a housewarming gift – around us both.  Even with the larger bed there isn’t much room, but that’s okay.  I don’t want there to be an inch of wasted space between us. 

I swallow my mouthful of martini then and kiss you softly but deeply, slipping the tip of my tongue between your lips.  I’ve been such an idiot, begging you time after time to come home but never once thinking you might need something a little more familiar to come home to.  I’ve been taking care of you the best way I know how, but all the time touching you the way a nurse touches a patient,  not like a lover touches a lover, massaging you but not caressing you, my hands meeting your skin in a way that was gentle enough, but never intimate. 

No wonder you’ve been lost.

I cuddle you closer and unbutton your pajamas, tugging the shirt up and away so we can lie skin-to-skin, your legs in their striped silk smooth and warm between mine.  I kiss your eyelids and your still, dry lips, stroke your back and belly and sides.  There isn’t a part of you I don’t touch, loving you the way I’ve done it a thousand times before when you’ve been sick or sad or just too tired for anything more strenuous.  In all our years together, I’ve never known you to be so tired you didn’t enjoy being held, so exhausted you weren’t hungry for that reaffirmation of how I feel about you, of how I will always feel about you. 

“Come home to me, sweetheart,” I whisper again and again.  “You’ve been gone too long, and it’s just not the same here without you.  It’s time to come home.”

Your eyes don’t magically fly open.  You never move or make a sound.  Yet I _know_ it can’t just be my imagination when I feel something in you respond.  Lulled by the closeness and the soft music playing in its endless loop, I fall asleep in your arms, dreaming of  warmth and comfort and a love that can never die. 

I awake minutes or hours later – I’ll never be sure which – to a weak stirring, and open my eyes to find yours open, too, meeting mine in a bleary gaze

“Donald.”   The word comes out as a barely audible rasp.   It sounds about as much like your normal voice as Marilyn Manson sounds like Mozart, but it’s still the sweetest music I’ve ever heard. 

“You’ve got one out of two right.”  I stroke your cheek as tears stream down my own.  “Now say your own name so I’ll know all your synapses are firing." 

“Your own name.”   You say it without missing a beat, and I know right then and there that you’re back, you’re really back, and that everything is going to be all right after all. 

“Smartass.”  I hold your feeding tube aside to give you a kiss, keeping it soft and gentle, so very, very gentle, because now that you’re finally awake, part of me is convinced you’re made of eggshells and might break if I love you too hard.  Miraculously, you don’t shatter in a million pieces, and my heart does somersaults when your lips move in response to mine.  I deepen the kiss before I end it, afraid of sending you back into cardiac arrest by taking it too far, too soon.

“Senator Platt.  She—“

“She’s fine.  Thanks to you, she’s just fine.   She comes by every day to see you.”  I know I should be hitting the call button so half the hospital staff can charge in and swarm around you, should probably call your parents, too, as well as Kelly and Kenny and Platt.  But I want you all to myself for just a little while longer, and the confusion I see in your eyes tells me you need a chance to just breathe a little and get your bearings.

“I kept hearing your voice.”  I know your throat must feel like ten miles of the Saudi Desert at noon, but you shake your head when I try to hush you.  “Heard it and dreamed I was home.  Where—”

“You are home,” I say, holding you as tight as I dare and peppering your face with kisses.  “We’re both home in every way that matters.  Welcome home, my baby.  I’ve missed you so much.  _Welcome home_.”  


End file.
